"e.g. You're famous for some reason other than your writing"
I suspect people who are fans of your other (non-writing) work would want the physical 'souvenir' of your writing to display. I'm thinking of, say, an actor or musician's 'kiss and tell' book - a fan would want the book on the coffee table, not a title on an ebook app
Pragmatisim deals with facts, reality, idealism does not. To advocate for idealism over pragmatism in the workplace is to advocate for fantasy over reality - that may not be a good long-term career strategy. Let the products stand on their merits, warts and all, and let your employer make the best informed decision you can.
What problem did Windows cause your school that would support a migration to F/OSS? As a note, in most cases, windows, office, and server licenses are quite inexpensive for schools (K-12 or college/university level), so the cost argument alone isn't very compelling.
I work in a 4,000 student school district, and we are 75% Windows, 25% Mac users, and our annual MS software license costs for Win 7/XP, Office 2010, and about two dozen servers is less than the cost of one server admin. We currently have one Windows server Admin and one Mac server admin - chances are, we'd incur increased costs were we to switch to F/OSS. Before you poo-poo my statement, let me ask you this - how many 4,000 end-user F/OSS environments do you know of with only two system admins on payroll?
I agree, your employer is, I assume, in the business of making a profit, not demonstrating it's support of F/OSS software projects.
You should evaluate all suitable tools, find the ones that satify your needs, pick one based on certain criteria (cost, benefit, platform it runs on) - to make the organization choose an inferior product simply because it suits your ideological interests is wrong, as wrong as the MS/Windows user that rejects superior F/OSS simply because he dislikes Linux.
You appear to be putting your resume ahead of the interests of your employer - if Plone doesn't win over management based on cost, features, and benefits it offers the company, it's the wrong product. when you own the company you can choose to use inferior tools because of platform ideology, but until then the best thing you can do is evaluate your companies needs, determine which product best meets those needs, and then give that product your full-throated support. Anything else working against the better interests of the organization.
Please explain how they went through $425K worth of office space, paper, wages, etc? This was a slam-dunk, and it never went to court - it is a settlement. This case popped up in Feb. 2010, are you imagining it took a team of lawyers and countess hours researching to come up with so much evidence that the district found it cheaper to settle?
From the article, two important paragraphs:
The settlement calls for $175,000 to be placed in a trust for Robbins and $10,000 for a second student who filed suit, Jalil Hassan. Their lawyer, Mark Haltzman, will get $425,000 for his work on the case.
The FBI investigated whether the district broke any criminal wiretap laws, but prosecutors declined to bring any charges.
So the FBI couldn't find a crime to charge anyone with, but to save the school district the cost of a civil trial they paid(off) the lawyer $425K, gave $175K to one kid, and another kid got $10K for his me-too lawsuit - any word on the compensation for the other "victims" of this "crime" (they are alleged to have improperly taken 56,000 images in a two week period)?
The issue against the student that raised the charge is that he apparently didn't pay $55 for insurance and wasn't supposed to take the laptop home in the first place. It is also alleged that he damaged two other district laptops prior to taking this laptop home improperly.
The district has 2,300 students, each has a laptop.
Apple paid $1.7M for an acre adjoining their current datacenter FOR EXPANSION. Apple is not building a 500,000 square foot data center on a one acre lot as the post above would have you believe - to do so would require that Apple build the datacenter at least 12-14 stories tall, since one acre of land is only 43,560 square feet, and after taking in to consideration easements ten largest foot print for the building would be, say, 30,000 square feet (give or take)...
Seriously, there are 'fake' viruses that are used for testing - really just a block of code that matches a virus signature, have you considered one of those? For example: http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm (as others have mentioned).
Too bad Senator Byrd passed away, he could have diverted tens of billions of dollars to WV to fund this effort, then we could have had the Robert Byrd Hot Air Energy Generation Facility, and his legacy would live on!
" Tired of seeing software that he and others had written appropriated (without acknowledgment or compensation) by disreputable software companies and then told to pay for software they had written, Stallman took action, creating the foundation."
That doesn't seem right either - I thought the driving issue was the need to pay a fee to access driver software to modify it to use a product they already bought (I think it was a printer) - as I recall the issue was that software licenses were getting in the way of him doing the work he needed to do. He wasn't against paying for needed software, but in this case (his "tipping point"), but he was being required to pay to fix software he'd already paid for since the the manufacturer wouldn't/couldn't make it work.
Why not just try really, really hard to download your transaction history every month, then if you mis a month (or two) you can still have all your transactions?
I don't understand the mindset that can't remember to download the raw data required to do the in-depth analysis it claims it wants to do...
"Intel is just trying to profit from it. I just don't know how well that idea will go over with the uninformed masses."
I think you got that backwards - the uninformed will be happy the laptop was sold at a discount, and they will also be happy they can upgrade (if they want) for a relatively trivial amount of money at a later date (helping them avoid anticipated buyer's remorse).
Oddly, I think it is the informed masses (or should I say "those who mistakenly believe themselves to be informed") that are having a problem with it - I think they are upset that anyone with $50 can goose more performance out of a low-end CPU - prior to this being made available by Intel, overclocking was considered a black art by many. Now, and Tom, Dick, or Mary can go down to Best Buy, drop a $50 bill on the counter, and in a few hours have a faster laptop without picking up a screwdriver or trying to manipilate BIOS settings.
R U Serious? How many "informed geeks" are currently "loyal" to Intel, but will switch to a new CPU mfg. (AMD) for no other reason than Intel sells low-end processors that can be upgraded?
Intel has always sold parts that were capable of higher speeds, set at the factory to lower specs at a lower price, it's called binning (I'll bet AMD does the same think, disabling one core in a quad core CPU and calling it a three core CPU, but that's just a guess), difference is, AMD won't give you any way to activate that fourth core - in this instance, Intel is making the upgrade available for $50.
No one crys foul when a 3.2 GHz capable CPU is sold as a 2.4 GHz part, permanently hobbled at the factory to identify as a 2.4 GHz part and requires various BIOS-foo to realize it's full potential, but when Intel provides a convienient path to overclocking/upgrading a CPU that is not otherwise upgradeable, suddenly the outrage is palable?
I have to believe you are writing from an emotional point of view, based on a child-like view of the CPU industry.
Intel paying off OEMs for exclusivity deals is nothing new, they've done it for years and have been very forthright about it - what you seem to consider as a bribe has been spun as "loyalty discounts" for years.
MS subsidises advertising budgets for PC Mfgs. if they include Windows 95/98/200/XP/Vista/Win7 logos in the ads and ship every model advertised with the OS mentioned. They have been doing this for over 15 years (since Win95 AFAIK).
AMD & Intel both make some very nice chips, and with a little bit of effort you can buy a quad core CPU from either mfg. for about $100-120 (AMD 620 and Intel Q8300)
What is wrong with this? Gateway is getting cheaper silicon in their lower-end hardware, and users can upgrade performance for a few buck vs. buying a new laptop.
Intel sells the chip to Gateway at a discount, Gateway sells the laptop at a lower price, and the end user that wants better performance can choose to upgrade at a later date - those who don't want the upgrade got what they wanted, cheaper hardware.
If The performance jump were greater, say from dual to quad core, this would be great - Upgrading CPUs in a laptop are what we like to call "forklift upgrades" - albeit a very tiny forklift, this is an alternative.
Uhm, the production cost of what is essentially a "smartphone without a phone" is in no way related to the production cost of an actual tablet computer using note/netbook-caliber components, add in the Gov't subsidies and the reality that this is a $100 chinese product that is apparently being bought on the cheap due to a lack of interest in the market (read "they are being dumped").
This does not validate the views of the anti-vaccination brigade.
Just wait - it will be used by the government to "compensate" those who suffer with autisim but don't have the underlying condition - just to a slightly lesser extent.
BTW, did you notice that it is the Gov't writing these checks?
"The odd thing about this is it works in a very similar way to the good old bricks-and-mortar library. While a title is out on loan, it's unavailable to others to borrow (unless the library has purchased multiple copies); it only becomes available again once the loan period expires and the book removes itself from your reader."
How is that odd? Do you fail to reallize that paying for one copy of a book only entitles the librar to loan out one copy at a time? This is 100% consistent with the way libraries loan out books, audio books, music CDs, video tapes, DVDs and any other material they have. If the ebooks were copyright-free (not the same as DRM-free), then they could loan as many copies as they like, but if the works are copyright-protected then that limits the sharing...
Members of school boards can not be affiliated with any contract before the board - they can't teach in the district, work for a supplier/contractor to the district, etc.
Cash register technology is used to simplify/streamline the collection of payments from hundreds of kids in a few minutes - the typical lunch period is about 40-45 minutes long, and you have to run several hundred kids through the cashier lines in a few minutes, so the last kid through the line has enough time to eat their lunch before the end of the period.
Parents are constantly going to board meetings in my area, complaining about any/all aspects of lunch in the schools, but typically the range of choice is demanded by parents, the use of local fruits/vegetables, and the removal of certain foods ("junk" foods) are also defined by parents. The cafeteria workers are stuck between parents wishes for what their children eat and what the kids will actually eat. Remember, in this discussion, kids range from 5 to 18 years old...
A well-run district will have a self-funded cafeteria, with the entire cost of all foods and preparation being covered by the students that opt to buy their lunches AND the state and federal government in cases of defined need.
A four-digit PIN is not "Big Brother" - not by any stretch of the imagination.
How can a parent avoid the glare of Big Brother in this case? Pack a lunch. Or pay with cash.
Would these parents have been happier if the school district asked each parent to fund a lunch account without ANY security? I doubt it.
Would they be happier with three digit PINs? Two? One?
I work in IT for a public school district (K-12), and we have a similar system in our cafeterias - many, many kids have PINs of 1234, 1111 and the like - and that works just fine.
As for checking the composition of a child's lunch, I'm certain it was either asked for or cheered for by a vocal minority of parents. That is how most changes occur in public schools, and they get away with it because most parents are complacent, trusting that the professionals they hired and elected to run the schools know what they are doing.
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I agree with you, except that last little bit:
I suspect people who are fans of your other (non-writing) work would want the physical 'souvenir' of your writing to display. I'm thinking of, say, an actor or musician's 'kiss and tell' book - a fan would want the book on the coffee table, not a title on an ebook app
Pragmatisim deals with facts, reality, idealism does not. To advocate for idealism over pragmatism in the workplace is to advocate for fantasy over reality - that may not be a good long-term career strategy. Let the products stand on their merits, warts and all, and let your employer make the best informed decision you can.
What problem did Windows cause your school that would support a migration to F/OSS? As a note, in most cases, windows, office, and server licenses are quite inexpensive for schools (K-12 or college/university level), so the cost argument alone isn't very compelling.
I work in a 4,000 student school district, and we are 75% Windows, 25% Mac users, and our annual MS software license costs for Win 7/XP, Office 2010, and about two dozen servers is less than the cost of one server admin. We currently have one Windows server Admin and one Mac server admin - chances are, we'd incur increased costs were we to switch to F/OSS. Before you poo-poo my statement, let me ask you this - how many 4,000 end-user F/OSS environments do you know of with only two system admins on payroll?
I agree, your employer is, I assume, in the business of making a profit, not demonstrating it's support of F/OSS software projects.
You should evaluate all suitable tools, find the ones that satify your needs, pick one based on certain criteria (cost, benefit, platform it runs on) - to make the organization choose an inferior product simply because it suits your ideological interests is wrong, as wrong as the MS/Windows user that rejects superior F/OSS simply because he dislikes Linux.
You appear to be putting your resume ahead of the interests of your employer - if Plone doesn't win over management based on cost, features, and benefits it offers the company, it's the wrong product. when you own the company you can choose to use inferior tools because of platform ideology, but until then the best thing you can do is evaluate your companies needs, determine which product best meets those needs, and then give that product your full-throated support. Anything else working against the better interests of the organization.
From the fine article:
Please explain how they went through $425K worth of office space, paper, wages, etc? This was a slam-dunk, and it never went to court - it is a settlement. This case popped up in Feb. 2010, are you imagining it took a team of lawyers and countess hours researching to come up with so much evidence that the district found it cheaper to settle?
From the article, two important paragraphs:
So the FBI couldn't find a crime to charge anyone with, but to save the school district the cost of a civil trial they paid(off) the lawyer $425K, gave $175K to one kid, and another kid got $10K for his me-too lawsuit - any word on the compensation for the other "victims" of this "crime" (they are alleged to have improperly taken 56,000 images in a two week period)?
The issue against the student that raised the charge is that he apparently didn't pay $55 for insurance and wasn't supposed to take the laptop home in the first place. It is also alleged that he damaged two other district laptops prior to taking this laptop home improperly.
The district has 2,300 students, each has a laptop.
Apple paid $1.7M for an acre adjoining their current datacenter FOR EXPANSION. Apple is not building a 500,000 square foot data center on a one acre lot as the post above would have you believe - to do so would require that Apple build the datacenter at least 12-14 stories tall, since one acre of land is only 43,560 square feet, and after taking in to consideration easements ten largest foot print for the building would be, say, 30,000 square feet (give or take)...
Thanks CaptainDefragged for link to actual Bloomberg piece on this purchase: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-10-05/apple-s-data-needs-mean-1-7-million-jacuzzi-for-carolina-pair.html?cmpid=yhoo
Have you considered installing Windows?
Seriously, there are 'fake' viruses that are used for testing - really just a block of code that matches a virus signature, have you considered one of those? For example: http://www.eicar.org/anti_virus_test_file.htm (as others have mentioned).
Too bad Senator Byrd passed away, he could have diverted tens of billions of dollars to WV to fund this effort, then we could have had the Robert Byrd Hot Air Energy Generation Facility, and his legacy would live on!
That doesn't seem right either - I thought the driving issue was the need to pay a fee to access driver software to modify it to use a product they already bought (I think it was a printer) - as I recall the issue was that software licenses were getting in the way of him doing the work he needed to do. He wasn't against paying for needed software, but in this case (his "tipping point"), but he was being required to pay to fix software he'd already paid for since the the manufacturer wouldn't/couldn't make it work.
EMACS was another of his "children," and a valuable contribution...
He was a system administrator, not the director of the lab! Minsky, Papert, et al didn't report to him...
Why not each pay day?
End of the month?
First of the month?
I don't think you are trying if none of the above is a workable solution...
Why not just try really, really hard to download your transaction history every month, then if you mis a month (or two) you can still have all your transactions?
I don't understand the mindset that can't remember to download the raw data required to do the in-depth analysis it claims it wants to do...
I think you got that backwards - the uninformed will be happy the laptop was sold at a discount, and they will also be happy they can upgrade (if they want) for a relatively trivial amount of money at a later date (helping them avoid anticipated buyer's remorse).
Oddly, I think it is the informed masses (or should I say "those who mistakenly believe themselves to be informed") that are having a problem with it - I think they are upset that anyone with $50 can goose more performance out of a low-end CPU - prior to this being made available by Intel, overclocking was considered a black art by many. Now, and Tom, Dick, or Mary can go down to Best Buy, drop a $50 bill on the counter, and in a few hours have a faster laptop without picking up a screwdriver or trying to manipilate BIOS settings.
R U Serious? How many "informed geeks" are currently "loyal" to Intel, but will switch to a new CPU mfg. (AMD) for no other reason than Intel sells low-end processors that can be upgraded?
Intel has always sold parts that were capable of higher speeds, set at the factory to lower specs at a lower price, it's called binning (I'll bet AMD does the same think, disabling one core in a quad core CPU and calling it a three core CPU, but that's just a guess), difference is, AMD won't give you any way to activate that fourth core - in this instance, Intel is making the upgrade available for $50.
No one crys foul when a 3.2 GHz capable CPU is sold as a 2.4 GHz part, permanently hobbled at the factory to identify as a 2.4 GHz part and requires various BIOS-foo to realize it's full potential, but when Intel provides a convienient path to overclocking/upgrading a CPU that is not otherwise upgradeable, suddenly the outrage is palable?
I have to believe you are writing from an emotional point of view, based on a child-like view of the CPU industry.
Intel paying off OEMs for exclusivity deals is nothing new, they've done it for years and have been very forthright about it - what you seem to consider as a bribe has been spun as "loyalty discounts" for years.
MS subsidises advertising budgets for PC Mfgs. if they include Windows 95/98/200/XP/Vista/Win7 logos in the ads and ship every model advertised with the OS mentioned. They have been doing this for over 15 years (since Win95 AFAIK).
Intel makes nice chips, and some great deals can be found if you go with last gen technology. Intel has a dual core Celeron E3300 that supports virtualization that I can buy retail, with heatsink/fan, for $40 at http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0327583 - I don't really consider that a price premium over AMD, and MBs are available at comparable prices to AMD models. The cheapest dual core AMD chip I can find retail is $61 http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0346724 with a single core Sempron available for as low as $33 http://www.microcenter.com/single_product_results.phtml?product_id=0317380 .
AMD & Intel both make some very nice chips, and with a little bit of effort you can buy a quad core CPU from either mfg. for about $100-120 (AMD 620 and Intel Q8300)
I think not. Feigned moral outrage over a non-story like this won't shift market trends.
How many "informed geeks" will be impacted by this experimental move in one low-end laptop?
If anything, they may wind-up buying this laptop to try and crack the upgrade code - it could actually help sales.
What is wrong with this? Gateway is getting cheaper silicon in their lower-end hardware, and users can upgrade performance for a few buck vs. buying a new laptop.
Intel sells the chip to Gateway at a discount, Gateway sells the laptop at a lower price, and the end user that wants better performance can choose to upgrade at a later date - those who don't want the upgrade got what they wanted, cheaper hardware.
If The performance jump were greater, say from dual to quad core, this would be great - Upgrading CPUs in a laptop are what we like to call "forklift upgrades" - albeit a very tiny forklift, this is an alternative.
Uhm, the production cost of what is essentially a "smartphone without a phone" is in no way related to the production cost of an actual tablet computer using note/netbook-caliber components, add in the Gov't subsidies and the reality that this is a $100 chinese product that is apparently being bought on the cheap due to a lack of interest in the market (read "they are being dumped").
Thanks jigsawhacker for the link: http://androidos.in/2010/09/the-truth-about-35-android-tablet-from-indian-government/
So now every child will have to be tested for this underlying condition?
Just wait - it will be used by the government to "compensate" those who suffer with autisim but don't have the underlying condition - just to a slightly lesser extent.
BTW, did you notice that it is the Gov't writing these checks?
How is that odd? Do you fail to reallize that paying for one copy of a book only entitles the librar to loan out one copy at a time? This is 100% consistent with the way libraries loan out books, audio books, music CDs, video tapes, DVDs and any other material they have. If the ebooks were copyright-free (not the same as DRM-free), then they could loan as many copies as they like, but if the works are copyright-protected then that limits the sharing...
I think your tin foil hat is a bit tight.
Members of school boards can not be affiliated with any contract before the board - they can't teach in the district, work for a supplier/contractor to the district, etc.
Cash register technology is used to simplify/streamline the collection of payments from hundreds of kids in a few minutes - the typical lunch period is about 40-45 minutes long, and you have to run several hundred kids through the cashier lines in a few minutes, so the last kid through the line has enough time to eat their lunch before the end of the period.
Parents are constantly going to board meetings in my area, complaining about any/all aspects of lunch in the schools, but typically the range of choice is demanded by parents, the use of local fruits/vegetables, and the removal of certain foods ("junk" foods) are also defined by parents. The cafeteria workers are stuck between parents wishes for what their children eat and what the kids will actually eat. Remember, in this discussion, kids range from 5 to 18 years old...
A well-run district will have a self-funded cafeteria, with the entire cost of all foods and preparation being covered by the students that opt to buy their lunches AND the state and federal government in cases of defined need.
A four-digit PIN is not "Big Brother" - not by any stretch of the imagination.
How can a parent avoid the glare of Big Brother in this case? Pack a lunch. Or pay with cash.
Would these parents have been happier if the school district asked each parent to fund a lunch account without ANY security? I doubt it.
Would they be happier with three digit PINs? Two? One?
I work in IT for a public school district (K-12), and we have a similar system in our cafeterias - many, many kids have PINs of 1234, 1111 and the like - and that works just fine.
As for checking the composition of a child's lunch, I'm certain it was either asked for or cheered for by a vocal minority of parents. That is how most changes occur in public schools, and they get away with it because most parents are complacent, trusting that the professionals they hired and elected to run the schools know what they are doing.